Discussion The Official Steam 2020 Winter Sale Thread

rivethead

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Jan 16, 2005
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Happy Holidays everyone!

The Steam 2020 Winter Sale starts today. In years past, a thread would have already been started. But I think a lot of people feel like I do: Steam sales have lost some of their magic since they no longer do flash sales or daily deals.

Regardless, I find it entertaining to see what people are looking for (and ultimately get...including those undiscovered gems/impulse buys).

So here's what I'll likely pick up:

1) All of the Grim Dawn DLCs - I'm playing Grim Dawn right now and love it.
2) Hades (Bastion was amazing...I should probably get Transistor too but Hades looks better)
3) Borderlands 2 Commander Lilith DLC - I'm not paying more than a few bucks for this. They gave this DLC away for free and now full price is $16...ridiculous.
4) The Witcher 3. It's probably about time and CDPR probably need the money to put out some fires they've created...
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
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The Steam Winter Sale is their "Big Sale" for me. The Summer Sale was always about lower prices on newly released games, while the winter sale has always been companies trying to boost their bottom line, so super low prices on some of the older stuff. Its also how i tend to gift some of my gamer friends who live further away.

My "buy" limit on my wish list @ $9.99, the price at which I'll consider a game. I recently saw Wolfenstein 2 drift below this price, so that's a near certain pick-up for me.

2) Hades (Bastion was amazing...I should probably get Transistor too but Hades looks better)

4) The Witcher 3. It's probably about time and CDPR probably need the money to put out some fires they've created...

- Pick up Transistor, it is a beautiful, fun game with an interesting twist on combat. It is definitely not just "cyberpunk Bastion". I'll be looking into Pyre as well, and will pick up Hades some day when it drops below $10.

- The Witcher 3 is expected to get a huge patch next year or the year after that to incorporate Raytracing (will likely coincide with a PS5/XSX relaunch of the game) and is also expected to include all of the DLC bundled. Word is that if you own the base copy of W3, you will get the enhanced edition with patch and DLC for "free" as well (the only cost is time). I have the game, and have played W1 & 2, but have thought of waiting for the patch since I will likely never pick up the game again after completing it once.
 

rivethead

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Jan 16, 2005
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Well I know that it takes Steam some time to get all the sales online but far I'm pretty meh about what's on sale.
 

Stg-Flame

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Mar 10, 2007
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1) All of the Grim Dawn DLCs - I'm playing Grim Dawn right now and love it.
Damn you, I'm hovering between trying to finish the Dungeon series and reinstalling Grim Dawn again... Every time I jump back in, I end up dumping another 400 or so hours in just playing around with new builds. I think if I do it again though, I'm going to purge my GrimVault and start over from scratch.

- The Witcher 3 is expected to get a huge patch next year or the year after that to incorporate Raytracing (will likely coincide with a PS5/XSX relaunch of the game) and is also expected to include all of the DLC bundled. Word is that if you own the base copy of W3, you will get the enhanced edition with patch and DLC for "free" as well (the only cost is time). I have the game, and have played W1 & 2, but have thought of waiting for the patch since I will likely never pick up the game again after completing it once.
I haven't looked into what Raytracing is but TW3 is absolutely beautiful without any enhancements and even that being said, there's graphic overhaul mods out there that push the graphics even further. It's definitely a game that I will regularly go back and replay over and over again. The different quest paths and even the different builds are enough to warrant multiple play-throughs, but for me, it's the story.

I'll likely grab Hades as well since I love Bastion and Transistor. I'll probably keep an eye on anything that dipped under $20 this sale from my wishlist (which just keeps growing).
 
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rivethead

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I'm also eyeing Trine 4 for $7.50. I loved Trine 1 and 2. Trine 3 was a disaster for Frozenbyte. But it sounds like they made up for it with Trine 4.

Heck for $10 I can get both 3 and 4.....
 

GodisanAtheist

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Nov 16, 2006
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I haven't looked into what Raytracing is but TW3 is absolutely beautiful without any enhancements and even that being said, there's graphic overhaul mods out there that push the graphics even further. It's definitely a game that I will regularly go back and replay over and over again. The different quest paths and even the different builds are enough to warrant multiple play-throughs, but for me, it's the story.

- I have so little time to play games nowadays that even the prospect of starting a 100 hour behemoth of a game gives me pause, let alone replaying it.

However, if we're going to get an enhanced edition with all the DLC for free, then I'm going to hard pass on the Expansion pass that Steam is currently selling for $10. I'd rather wait to play one 100 hour complete playthrough than do a 40 hour playthrough in the base game and completely miss a bunch of good story if I have no plans to ever go back and play it again.
 

KeithP

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Jun 15, 2000
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Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Black Mesa and Stardew Valley are all on sale. I have a looked at all in the past but never pulled the trigger, will probably end up with at least one of them.

-KeithP
 

Ajay

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Borderlands 3 is around $20, pretty decent amount of game play (especially if you get DLCs). Looter/Shooter.
 

Stg-Flame

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I'd rather wait to play one 100 hour complete playthrough than do a 40 hour playthrough in the base game and completely miss a bunch of good story if I have no plans to ever go back and play it again.
I'm not trying to deter you because I wish everyone could experience TW3, but I was sitting at 136 hours before I even went to Skellige (basically the third portion of the game if you broke it into 4 parts). There's so much to do in Velen/Novigrad that you can easily spend 50 hours wandering the countryside and doing side-quests. Which, I should also note that every single side-quest is pretty unique. There's no repeated fetch quests you find in other games and pretty much every side-quest will bring you to a unique reward and a unique enemy to fight. There's also the feature of static enemy levels, so you can easily wander into an area with enemies much higher level than you who will kill you very quickly, but there are ways to fight them effectively and I found that to be one of the better parts of the combat in this game.

Edit: I should note that most people said they finished the main story in under 40 hours while only touching a few side-quests. My time was spent doing every single possible thing in Novigrad/Velen before I left for Skellige. I'm guessing since the story sends you back and fourth, you're meant to tackle the side-quests in the areas the story sends you to, but I wanted to clear the map before leaving, so it took a while.

Also, I should probably retract my previous statement about looking at games on my wishlist under $20 since 80% of my list is under $20 now...
 
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GodisanAtheist

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I'm also eyeing Trine 4 for $7.50. I loved Trine 1 and 2. Trine 3 was a disaster for Frozenbyte. But it sounds like they made up for it with Trine 4.

Heck for $10 I can get both 3 and 4.....

- The Trine games always looked like games I'd really enjoy, until I picked up Trine 1 and really just couldn't figure out what exactly the devs were going for. There is some side scrolling, there is some physics based puzzle solving, if I recall you had to swap between your three characters to resolve different issues... But it just was too slow or something and didn't click.
 

Stg-Flame

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Mar 10, 2007
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- The Trine games always looked like games I'd really enjoy, until I picked up Trine 1 and really just couldn't figure out what exactly the devs were going for. There is some side scrolling, there is some physics based puzzle solving, if I recall you had to swap between your three characters to resolve different issues... But it just was too slow or something and didn't click.
That's pretty much what they were going for, but in Trine 1 you could beat the game with almost any character without swapping. They did intend for it to be a co-op experience which is why in Trine 2 they made it more mandatory that certain characters be used in certain areas. Trine 3 was a trainwreck but I've heard the 4th game went back to what worked and what fans enjoyed, so I might grab that (since I gave up on the series after the 3rd game and honestly forgot about it until this thread.).
 
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SteveGrabowski

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Oct 20, 2014
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- I have so little time to play games nowadays that even the prospect of starting a 100 hour behemoth of a game gives me pause, let alone replaying it.

However, if we're going to get an enhanced edition with all the DLC for free, then I'm going to hard pass on the Expansion pass that Steam is currently selling for $10. I'd rather wait to play one 100 hour complete playthrough than do a 40 hour playthrough in the base game and completely miss a bunch of good story if I have no plans to ever go back and play it again.

Oh man, if you think Witcher 3 is only a 40 hour base game. With DLC I put almost 400 hours into it, and the DLC, especially Blood and Wine, is top notch. Highly recommended game, but I hope you're not busy for six months.
 

Fenixgoon

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Oh man, if you think Witcher 3 is only a 40 hour base game. With DLC I put almost 400 hours into it, and the DLC, especially Blood and Wine, is top notch. Highly recommended game, but I hope you're not busy for six months.

just the base game for me was 140hrs. and i'm not a 100%-er either. i thought about replaying it, reinstalled it, took a few steps...then uninstalled, lol.
 

GodisanAtheist

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Nov 16, 2006
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Oh man, if you think Witcher 3 is only a 40 hour base game. With DLC I put almost 400 hours into it, and the DLC, especially Blood and Wine, is top notch. Highly recommended game, but I hope you're not busy for six months.

- Jesus Hume Christ there may actually be such a thing as "too much game for your money"
 

SteveGrabowski

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just the base game for me was 140hrs. and i'm not a 100%-er either. i thought about replaying it, reinstalled it, took a few steps...then uninstalled, lol.

Same here. I thought about it when I did a gpu upgrade, but I played the hell out of that game and can't go back to it. And besides, it already looked and ran amazing on my old GTX 970 when I played through it.

Same with Skyrim. Probably will be similar once I finish RDR2 also. But I try to do every sidequest when I find a large game I really get into like those three.
 

SteveGrabowski

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For anyone who hasn't played it, Yakuza 0 for $4.99 is an unbelievable deal. Game is like a modern day beat 'em up but the story is incredible and it has lots of really funny Japanese humor. Plus as an aside you also basically get a free copies of the Sega arcade games Space Harrier, Outrun, Super Hang-On, and Fantasy Zone, as you can walk into arcades in the game and play these. I think Jim Sterling does a great job explaining why this series is so good in his review of Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami (Kiwami is the sequel to 0).


Plus the entire mainline series will be on Steam by March (seven games, not counting the new RPG Yakuza Like a Dragon).
 

Fenixgoon

Lifer
Jun 30, 2003
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i caved and bought Doom Eternal w/ Xpac. If you thought Doom 2016 was fast-paced, Eternal cranks it to 11.
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
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Picked-up a couple games for my friends as gifts.

Doom Eternal + Jedi Fallen Order for one.

Outer Wilds + Dead Cells + C&C Remastered for the other.

Got CP2077 from one in return... maybe they secretly hate me :p?
 
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GodisanAtheist

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Ok, picked up a few games for myself:

SW Force Unleashed 2 (Sounds like the biggest issue with this game is that its short and the story feels unfinished, which isn't as much of an issue when the game is $5).

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (been waiting for this one to hit sale prices for a WHILE)

Wolfenstein YoungBloods
(Surprised to see this on such deep discount so quickly, given how long it took Wolf 2 to hit the same price).

Pyre
(I absolutely love SuperGiant's games and even if Pyre looks like the odd one out between Hades and Transistor/Bastion, I'm sure I'll love it).

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Heard Good things about this one for a long time, and I do tend to enjoy Ninja Theory's games, so I picked it up).
 

[DHT]Osiris

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Dec 15, 2015
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Got Satisfactory for 20% off. Made an exception to my 'no early access games, no exceptions' rule. Worth it. Very fun.
 

Artorias

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Feb 8, 2014
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Got No Mans Sky and Halo MCC.

I have to stay I forgot how fun Halo CE is to play. Its been at least 12 years since I've played the original version, the remaster looks great, gameplay is solid, AI is smart, and is really hard for me even on heroic difficulty, but rewarding. The soundtrack is great too.

Having never played any other HALO game, I'm looking forward to the entire storyline, and maybe some multiplayer in Halo Reach or H3.
 

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
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Crumbs, forgot about the sale, hope it’s still on. Is MCC any good? I was taking a look at it last time I was on steam.
 

Artorias

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2014
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Crumbs, forgot about the sale, hope it’s still on. Is MCC any good? I was taking a look at it last time I was on steam.

It's been great so far. The fact you can switch between the old graphics in Halo CE and Halo 2 in real-time is mind blowing. The difference in Halo 2 especially is crazy, they really did a great job on remastering that.
 
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rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
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A very restrained Steam Winter Sale this year.

I picked up only Transistor and Ashes of Malmouth (Grim Dawn DLC).
 

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
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A very restrained Steam Winter Sale this year.

I picked up only Transistor and Ashes of Malmouth (Grim Dawn DLC).
Thanks to quarantine Steam sales are up, and they know they dont have to offer the same discounts as previous years.